On April 26, 1986, Reactor No. 4 at the Vladimir I. Lenin Nuclear Power Plant at Chernobyl, Ukraine in the Soviet Union exploded, producing the worst nuclear accident in history. Among the sources documenting the US government response to the Chernobyl accident are a number of congressional committee hearings held within nine months of the disaster. These hearings provide a fascinating window into the concerns of American politicians and officials about this tragedy.
As early as April 29, just three days after the accident, Chernobyl was being discussed in passing in several congressional committee hearings. The first hearing explicitly dedicated to the accident was held on May 1, just five days later. This was a briefing before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. This was the first of five such hearings held over the next several months by two House , two Senate and one Joint committee. Several other hearings on international nuclear safety were likewise inspired by Chernobyl.
Beyond seeking additional information about the Chernobyl accident itself, these hearings dealt with two major issues. The primary concern was whether such a disaster could occur at an American nuclear power plant. The committees were reassured that this was unlikely, due to major design differences between the Chernobyl reactor and most American nuclear plants. The other major worry was the impact of the accident on agriculture and food supplies, both in the US and globally, due to the spread of radioactive contamination from the Chernobyl site.
Congressional Committee Hearings on the Chernobyl Accident, within one year:
The Chernobyl Accident: Hearing Before the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, United States Senate, Ninety-Ninth Congress, Second Session on the Chernobyl Accident and Implications for the Domestic Nuclear Industry. 1986. (Joyner Docs Stacks: Y 4.EN 2:S.HRG.99-869)
The Chernobyl Disaster: Implications for World Food Security and the U.S. Farm Economy: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Agriculture and Transportation of the Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, Ninety-Ninth Congress, Second Session. 1986. (Joyner Docs Stacks: Y 4.EC 7:C 42)
The Chernobyl, Russia, Nuclear Incident: Hearing Before the Committee on Labor and Human Resources, United States Senate, One Hundredth Congress, First Session on Reviewing the Causes and Consequences of the Chernobyl Nuclear Powerplant Incident. 1987. (Joyner Docs Stacks: Y 4.L 11/4:S.HRG.100-305)
Positive Safety Features of U.S. Nuclear Reactors: Technical Lessons Confirmed at Chernobyl: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Energy Research and Production of the Committee on Science and Technology, House of Representatives, Ninety-Ninth Congress, Second Session. 1986. (Joyner Docs Stacks: Y 4.Sci 2:99/138)
Possible Impact on Agriculture of the Explosion of the Soviet Nuclear Plant at Chernobyl: Hearing Before the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, United States Senate, Ninety-Ninth Congress, Second Session. 1986. (Joyner Docs Stacks: Y 4.AG 8/3:S.HRG.99-718)
Soviet Nuclear Accident at Chernobyl: Briefing and Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Energy Conservation and Power of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, House of Representatives, Ninety-ninth Congress, Second Session. 1986. (Joyner Docs Stacks: Y 4.EN 2/3:99-138)
Additional Relevant Federal Sources:
The Legacy of Chornobyl: Health and Safety 20 Years Later: Hearing Before the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, One Hundred Ninth Congress, Second Session. 2006. (Joyner Docs Stacks: Y 4.SE 2:109-2-5) Online: https://purl.fdlp.gov/GPO/LPS93573
The Legacy of Chornobyl: 1986 to 1996 and Beyond: Hearing Before the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, One Hundred Fourth Congress, Second Session. 1996. (Joyner Docs Stacks: Y 4.SE 2:109-2-5) Online: https://purl.fdlp.gov/GPO/LPS93573
Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Implications of the Accident at Chernobyl for Safety Regulation of Commercial Nuclear Power Plants in the United States – Final Report. 1989. (Joyner Docs Stacks: Y 4.EN 2:S.HRG.102-866) Online: https://purl.fdlp.gov/GPO/gpo80232
Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Report on the Accident at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station. 1987. (Joyner Docs Stacks: Y 3.N 88:10/1250) Online: https://purl.fdlp.gov/GPO/gpo80232
Safety of Soviet-Designed Nuclear Powerplants: Hearing Before the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, United States Senate, One Hundred Second Congress, Second Session. 1992. (Joyner Docs Stacks: Y 4.EN 2:S.HRG.102-866)
Higginbotham, Adam. Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2019. (Joyner Stacks: TK1362 .U38 H54 2019)
Oberg, James E. Uncovering Soviet Disasters: Exploring the Limits of Glasnost. New York: Random House, 1988. (Joyner: PN5277.D58 O24 1988)
Schmid, Sonja D. Producing Power: The Pre-Chernobyl History of the Soviet Nuclear Industry. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2015. (Joyner Stacks: TK9085 .S36 2015)
With the advent of widespread online disinformation a decade ago, there has been intense debate about the impact that such efforts actually have on shaping popular and elite opinion. While propaganda and disinformation certainly have some effect on their intended audiences, the extent of their effectiveness remains in question. At the risk of simplifying matters, does disinformation truly shape popular opinion, or does it merely take it in a direction that it was already inclined to travel?
One interesting perspective on this topic was provided by a former practitioner of what the Soviets called “active measures,” who after his defection became a leading Cold War researcher of disinformation. His opinion on the matter, as expressed in 1971 congressional testimony, remains worth considering down to the present.
Ladislav Bittman
Picture of Ladislav Bittman, taken from Czech ID Card, circa 1964. Source: Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Martin-Bittman
Ladislav Bittman was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1931. In his teens he joined the communist party and attended university. Upon graduating in 1954 with a degree in law, and also training in journalism, he joined the Czech intelligence service, the StB. By February 1964, Bittman had risen to become Deputy Director of Department 8, the recently created branch of the StB devoted to active measures and disinformation.
In his role with Department 8, Bittman would play a major part in one of the most infamous examples of Soviet-bloc active measures in the Cold War: Operation Neptune. In May 1964 a Czech television crew sought to look for possible buried Nazi treasure in a Czech lake. After a week’s searching, they discovered four metal crates at the bottom of the lake. At a September 1964 press conference, Czech authorities announced that the crates contained thousands of Nazi documents, many shedding light on German wartime aggression and atrocities. Some of the documents were shared with western media, generating a great deal of coverage and embarrassing West Germany by reminding western public opinion of the Nazi past, a major goal of Soviet-bloc active measures.
In 1968, after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, Bittman defected to the United States. At this time, he revealed the truth about Operation Neptune: that the metal crates had been placed in the lake by StB divers, including Bittman himself, for the television crew to find. The Nazi documents supposedly found in the crates were gathered from archives in Moscow and Prague, and added after the fact. The crates contained only blank documents when they were placed in the lake.
“Lawrence Britt” Testifies Before Congress
In May 1971, Bittman testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Internal Security, under the alias Lawrence Britt. In his testimony, Bittman/Britt spoke extensively of his experiences conducting active measures in the StB. He also offered his thoughts on the impact of disinformation on targeted societies. Even today, his words offer a cautionary note for some of the more alarmist claims regarding this phenomenon:
In this connection I would like to mention one thing. It would be a big mistake to make a conclusion that Communist agents have successfully penetrated all the non-Communist world and that they are responsible for all its trouble and problems. This espionage paranoia typical for the 1950’s can actually only innerly (sic.) weaken the democratic world. In the present competition between the Communist and the non-Communist world, Soviet-bloc intelligence is only one of many foreign policy instruments, and certainly not the most important one. Communist disinformation, propaganda and influence operation can’t win that competition. The new Communist espionage paranoia would be a tragic mistake for many reasons, and I would like to mention at least one. It creates dirty waters in which especially the Commu- nist intelligence knows how to fish and thus it would be completely counterproductive. It was not a good fortune that the Communist intelligence services registered their greatest successes in the 1950’s. The atmosphere of those years was a fertile soil for their activities.
(Testimony of Lawrence Britt, 15)
Bittman went on to publish several books on the topic of disinformation and active measures, becoming one of the pioneering figures in this field. He changed his name to Lawrence Martin-Bittman, and in 1972 began teaching courses on journalism and propaganda at Boston University. In 1986, he founded a Program for the Study of Disinformation at that institution. He retired from Boston University in 1996, and passed away in 2018, just as his chosen field gained a newfound relevance.
Bittman/Britt’s Congressional Testimony
Testimony of Lawrence Britt: Hearing Before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws, Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Ninety-Second Congress, First Session, May 5, 1971. (Joyner Docs CWIS: Y 4.J 89/2:B 77)
Books by Ladislav Bittman
Bittman, Ladislav. The Deception Game: Czechoslovak Intelligence in Soviet Political Warfare. Syracuse (NY.): Syracuse University Research Corp, 1972. (Joyner Stacks: DB217.B5 A3)
Bittman, Ladislav. The KGB and Soviet Disinformation: An Insider’s View. Washington: Pergamon-Brassey’s, 1985. (Joyner Stacks: UB251.S65 B58 1985)
Ladislav Bittman (ed.) The New Image-Makers: Soviet Propaganda & Disinformation Today. Washington: Pergamon-Brassey’s, 1988. (Joyner Stacks: DK289 .N48 1988)
Rid, Thomas. Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020. (Joyner Stacks: AS911.F813 R4)
Picture of Red Channels on display as part of The Berlin Wall. A World Divided, a museum exhibition in Madrid, Spain from November 2023-January 2025. Photos courtesy of Miren Bereciartu, Musealia.
From November 2023-January 2025, an item from ECU’s Main Campus Library’s Hoover Collection on International Communism was part of a major museum exhibit dealing with the history of the Cold War. The 1950 book Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television, was included as part of an exhibition titled The Berlin Wall. A World Divided.
Hosted in Madrid, Spain, The Berlin Wall exhibition saw over 160,000 visitors during its 14-month run. The exhibition was created by the Spanish-based company Musealia, in cooperation with the Berlin Wall Foundation. Academic Library Services thanks Musealia for allowing us to be part of such an enormously important and successful cultural program.
Often described as the “Bible of the Blacklist,” Red Channels was produced by a team of freelance countersubversives, and it alleged that 151 professional entertainers were involved in communist activity. Those listed in Red Channels were soon added to the blacklist, and thus found it virtually impossible to obtain work in radio or television. It is one of the major artifacts of America’s 1950s “Red Scare.”
Academic Library Services, East Carolina University, has recently published Congress and Countersubversion in the 20th Century: Aspects and Legacies. This book consists of essays originally posted here on the CWIS blog. It comprises a collection of 24 self-contained chapters, organized into five chronological/topical sections, covering various aspects of the efforts of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and other 20th Century congressional committees investigating real or alleged subversion. These entries have been revised, updated, and merged as needed. There is also an introductory essay that explores the broader history of congressional countersubversive investigations. Each brief essay contains its own list of sources.
The entries span a variety of topics from the birth of congressional countersubversive investigations in the First World War and aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution, all the way up to Russian election influence efforts in 2016-2020, and congressional investigations of white nationalism. Topics covered in-between include the origins of the House Un-American Activities Committee, the tragic injustice that was the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War Two, various aspects of McCarthyism and the Red Scare, especially the role of congressional committees such as HUAC, the 1960 Martin/Mitchell affair, the Black Panthers, and aspects of the broader Cold War espionage and political/information struggle.
This volume is intended to provide an overview and guide to further research for students, members of the public, and professional scholars.
The book is freely available through ECU’s Scholarship online repository, and is available for print purchase through UNC Press:
John Metcalfe, first witness to appear before the House Special Committee on Un-American Activities, discussed his experience infiltrating the German-American Bund, August 12, 1938. Source: Harris & Ewing Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division: https://www.loc.gov/resource/hec.24931/
The following post is a revised version of an essay originally written for a compilation volume of posts from this blog. The collection, Congress and Countersubversion in the 20th Century: Aspects and Legacies, will be published in June by ECU Academic Library Services, in cooperation with UNC Press.
The hunt for subversive or “un-American” elements in U.S. history is a phenomenon generally associated with the right half of the political spectrum. When the concept of countersubversion is mentioned, it is the Red Scare, McCarthyism, and anti-communist “witch hunts” that usually come to mind. However, there have been several occasions in American history when large elements of the left have likewise embraced a countersubversive mindset regarding their adversaries. The first such occasion was in the 1930s, when much of the New Deal Left wholeheartedly embraced what has come to be known as the “Brown Scare.”
The rise of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party to power in Germany in 1933 inspired the creation of a number of radical right-wing movements here in the United States. The most infamous of these groups, was the Friends of New Germany, who in 1936 would rename themselves the German-American Bund and openly pattern themselves on and embrace German Nazism. Other groups included William Dudley Pelley’s Silver Legion of America (the “Silver Shirts”), Father Charles Coughlin’s Christian Front, and the Black Legion. The latter group was involved in several murders in the industrial Midwest, and became so infamous that they were the subject of a 1936 Warner Brothers film starring Humphrey Bogart.
This growth in domestic fascism and right-wing radicalism soon produced what historian Leo Ribuffo has called the “Brown Scare”: an often exaggerated fear of the threat posed by the radical right, in response to the alarming rise of the Third Reich in Europe and the frequently repellent activities of its supporters in the U.S. The Brown Scare soon penetrated the popular culture. In addition to films like Black Legion, Sinclair Lewis’s ironically titled 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here warned of a fascist takeover of America. Media outlets, such as newspapers, magazines, and radio, likewise struck up the alarm. A number of civil society organizations also led the charge against the emerging radical right. Groups such as the Friends of Democracy, Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League, and Mobilization for Democracy, exposed real and alleged fascist activities and mobilized public opinion against the newly-perceived threat.
The Brown Scare soon inspired governmental action against the believed threat of fascist subversion. Both the Roosevelt Administration and its allies in Congress quickly embraced the politics of the Brown Scare. Among other consequences, it would lead a New Deal Democrat, Rep. Samuel Dickstein (D-NY), to play a crucial role in creating what would become the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). President Roosevelt himself was committed to using the power of the federal government to root out domestic fascism, regardless of civil liberties concerns. It was Roosevelt who empowered J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI to engage in domestic political surveillance, starting in 1934.
As the perceived threat posed by foreign and domestic fascism grew, the Brown Scare only intensified. At home, events such as the 1938 discovery of a Nazi spy ring in New York City, and the German-American Bund’s infamous February 1939 rally at Madison Square Garden increased pressure to act against the radical right. Abroad, the continued successes of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy contributed to the growing concerns. One especially infamous quote uttered in the fall of 1936, during the Spanish Civil War, came to encapsulate this environment. In an offhand comment, Spanish Nationalist General Emilio Mola referred to a nationalist “fifth column” that would capture the city of Madrid from within. The phrase “fifth column” soon went viral, to borrow a contemporary term, spreading rapidly around the world. It was embraced wholeheartedly by supporters of the Brown Scare, for whom it came to embody the fear that the Bund, Silver Shirts, and other domestic fascists could be used by the Third Reich to weaken and subvert the US from within.
FDR openly adopted the idea of the “fifth column” to justify acting against domestic fascist groups. On May 26, 1940, in the midst of Germany’s relatively quick victories in western Europe, Roosevelt warned in a radio address about “the Trojan Horse. The Fifth Column that betrays a nation unprepared for treachery.” He went on to elaborate by stating that this internal enemy would seek “to create confusion of counsel, public indecision, political paralysis and, eventually, a state of panic…. The unity of the State can be sapped so that its strength is destroyed.” (Roosevelt’s Address on the “Fifth Column”)
Powered by such fears, the Brown Scare soon culminated in a campaign of legal persecution at federal, state, and local level. Both the head of the Bund, Fritz Kuhn, and the Silver Shirts, William Dudley Pelley, were arrested and tried. Kuhn was convicted in New York in 1939 for embezzling Bund funds, sent to prison, and eventually deported. Pelley was convicted by the federal government in 1942 on charges of sedition. He then became one of 30 defendants charged in a 1944 case, United States v. McWilliams, that alleged the defendants to be part of a conspiracy to engage in pro-Axis subversion. In a certain irony, many radical right organizations and individuals who embraced a right-wing version of the countersubversive ethos likewise found themselves targets of the Brown Scare. Elizabeth Dilling, author of the infamous 1934 guilt-by-association work The Red Network, joined Pelley among the defendants in United States v. McWilliams. As loathsome as Pelley, Dilling and many of the other defendants were, the charges were extremely questionable, and the great sedition trial of 1944 is generally considered a travesty of justice.
This case would end in a mistrial after the death of the judge, an event that marked the de facto end of the Brown Scare. The defeat of the Axis both discredited fascism and greatly reduced its salience as a domestic threat. In addition, the onset of the Cold War and the rise of the Second Red Scare would soon once again give right-wing countersubversion the upper hand.
As with the Red Scare of 1919-1920, the Brown Scare of 1933-1944 was rooted in a real threat, yet greatly exaggerated both the extent and scale of that threat. In the words of historian Alex Goodall:
The groups and individuals on the radical Right that might be reasonably described as fascist or cryptofascist…. added up to a tiny fraction of the population: no more than a few hundred thousand people in a nation of 130 million…. Right-wing extremists could cause trouble in their localities, but were largely impotent on the national stage. Noxious as they were, they never presented a meaningful threat to American institutions or spoke for more than a tiny minority of American citizens. (Goodall, Loyalty and Liberty, 194)
The major legacy of the Brown Scare was the manner in which it helped prepare the way for future countersubversive measures that gravely threatened civil liberties. The “fifth column” panic was one of a number of factors that led to the internment of Japanese-Americans in 1942. The Brown Scare’s mix of congressional investigation, executive branch law enforcement/surveillance activities, and civic activism provided a template for McCarthyism and the Second Red Scare. As historian John Earl Haynes described it:
Much of the popular image of American communism that appeared after 1945 was based on attitudes developed in the 1930s and early 1940s toward fascism…. And the techniques developed to fight American fascism and American fifth-column activity in the 1930s were the same as those used against American Communists in the late 1940s and 1950s. (Haynes, Red Scare or Red Menace, 19)
Finally, the willingness of some to label any opponent of the New Deal, or of American entry into World War II as fascist or pro-Nazi left many right-wing countersubversives with a keen desire to return the favor. They would eagerly seize on the opportunity to do so during the McCarthy Era.
Primary Sources From the Brown Scare
Carlson, John Roy. Under Cover. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1943. (Joyner Stacks: E743.5 .D4)
Lewis, Sinclair. It Can’t Happen Here: A Novel. Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., 1936. (Joyner Stacks: PS3523.E94 I6 1936; currently missing)
Rogge, O. John. The Official German Report: Nazi Penetration, 1924-1942. New York: T. Yoseloff, 1961. (Joyner Stacks: E743.5 .R64)
Beekman, Scott. William Dudley Pelley: A Life in Right-Wing Extremism and the Occult. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2005. (Joyner Stacks: E748 .W23 D48 2013)
Goodall, Alex. Loyalty and Liberty: American Countersubversion from World War I to the McCarthy Era. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013. (Joyner Stacks: E743.5 .G63 2013)
Hart, Bradley W. Hitler’s American Friends : The Third Reich’s Supporters in the United States. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2018. (On order for Joyner Library)
Haynes, John Earl. Red Scare or Red Menace?: American Communism and Anticommunism in the Cold War Era. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996. (Joyner Stacks: HX83 .H36 1996)
Ribuffo, Leo P. The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right from the Great Depression to the Cold War . Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983. (Joyner Stacks: E806 .R47 1983)
Smith, Geoffrey S. To Save a Nation; American Countersubversives, the New Deal, and the Coming of World War II. New York: Basic Books, 1973. (Joyner Stacks: E806 .S684)
Cartoon published in Pravda, October 31, 1986, alleging that AIDS was the work of American biological warfare researchers. Reproduced in: Geissler, Erhard and Robert Hunt Sprinkle. “Disinformation squared: Was the HIV-from-Fort-Detrick Myth a Stasi Success?” Politics and the Life Sciences: The Journal of the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 32 2 (2013): 2-99. P.27. DOI:10.2990/32_2_2.
Of all the many disinformation campaigns inaugurated during the Cold War, most but not all by the USSR, arguably the most infamous was the effort by the KGB and its allies to convince the world that AIDS was created in an alleged secret US biowarfare lab at Ft. Detrick, MD. The campaign incorporated the efforts of the KGB’s Service A, responsible for active measures efforts, along with their counterparts in the East German Stasi, and other Warsaw Pact secret services. Dubbed Operation Denver by the East Germans, the campaign began in 1983 and intensified in 1985, before being wound down in late 1987.
Despite being refuted by all credible medical experts, the AIDS as bioweapon theory has lingered on, serving as a sort of gateway drug to other conspiracy theories, and paving the way for later falsehoods regarding diseases such as Ebola virus and COVID-19.
Origins of the Campaign
Claims that various disease outbreaks were the result of American machinations were nothing new for the Communist Bloc. During the Korean War, China and North Korea mounted two extensive propaganda campaigns alleging that the US was employing biological warfare (BW). Even after the United States officially dismantled its BW program in the 1970s, such efforts at “active measures” continued. In 1981, Cuba claimed that an outbreak of Dengue Fever was caused by the CIA. The next year, the KGB-controlled Soviet journal Literaturnaya Gazeta published an “expose” arguing that a University of Maryland-operated bioresearch facility in Lahore, Pakistan was really a BW lab producing disease-bearing mosquitos for deliberate release. Unfounded as they were, the allegations created a furor that forced the lab director to leave the country.
With the horrific emergence of AIDS in the early 1980s, it was inevitable that the KGB would seek to incorporate this epidemic into their pantheon of medical disinformation theories. The first attempt came on July 16, 1983, when a Soviet-funded Indian newspaper named The Patriot published a letter allegedly written by an anonymous American scientist. The letter, in the words of scholar Thomas Rid, “was a masterfully executed disinformation operation: comprising about 20 percent forgery and 80 percent fact, truth and lies woven together, it was an eloquent, well-researched piece.” (Rid, Active Measures, 303)
The “letter” warned that AIDS was created as a result of Pentagon BW experiments centered around the research facility at Ft. Detrick, and tied into the Lahore lab allegations by claiming that this research would soon be transferred to Pakistan. The goal of the piece was to use fear of AIDS to mobilize anti-American sentiment in India. However, the article did not produce the desired reaction, and it would be two years before another attempt would be made to build an active measures campaign involving AIDS.
By the summer of 1985, the KGB had decided to launch a major disinformation campaign in support of the AIDS/Ft. Detrick falsehood. In a September 7, 1985 message to the Bulgarian intelligence service, the KGB stated that:
We are conducting a series of [active] measures in connection with the appearance in recent years in the USA of a new and dangerous disease, “Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome – AIDS”…, and its subsequent, large-scale spread to other countries, including those in Western Europe. The goal of these measures is to create a favorable opinion for us abroad that this disease is the result of secret experiments with a new type of biological weapon by the secret services of the USA and the Pentagon that spun out of control. (quoted in Selvage and Nehring, Operation “Denver”)
The effort went public on October 30, 1985, with an article in Literaturnaya Gazeta titled “Panic in the West.” This piece repeated the main themes of the Ft. Detrick allegation, and cited the July 1983 Patriot article in support of its argument. As the campaign evolved, the KGB and its east European allies made much of the thesis that the origins of AIDS lay on the African continent. This aroused a great deal of resentment among many Africans, who felt that the West was blaming them for the rapidly growing pandemic. Exploiting these sentiments by offering an alternative explanation of the origin of AIDS became a major focus of the KGB’s efforts.
At the same time, East German intelligence, known as the Stasi, assumed an increasingly important role in the AIDS active measures push. In July 1986, Department X (ten) of the Stasi’s foreign intelligence branch, responsible for disinformation efforts, officially adopted the code name “Operation Denver” for the AIDS campaign. On September 3, 1986, Department X updated the Bulgarians on their efforts:
With the goal of exposing the dangers to mankind arising from the research, production, and use of biological weapons, and also in order to strengthen anti-American sentiments in the world and to spark domestic political controversies in the USA, the GDR side will present you with a scientific study and other materials that prove that AIDS originated in the USA, not in Africa, and that AIDS is a product of the USA’s bioweapons research. (Quoted in Selvage, ‘Operation “Denver”,’ 103)
A major development came in August 1986, when the Non-Aligned Movement met in Harare, Zimbabwe. Attendees and journalists were flooded with copies of a brochure titled “AIDS: USA Home-Made Evil, NOT out of AFRICA.” Written by a pair of communist scientists living in East Germany, Jakob and Lilli Segal, the brochure argued that AIDS was a product of Ft. Detrick. The pamphlet gained great notoriety, and the Segals were soon embraced by those supporting the Ft. Detrick conspiracy theory.
Another key moment for Operation Denver came on October 29, 1986, when a British tabloid, the Sunday Express, became the first major western news outlet to run a story based on Jakob Segal’s claims. The Detrick conspiracy theory continued to spread in the first part of 1987. According to Thomas Rid, over 40 articles worldwide concerning the allegations appeared between January-March 1987. (Rid, Active Measures, 309) Perhaps the peak moment of Operation Denver came on March 30, 1987, when an Associated Press item summarizing Soviet allegations about AIDS and Ft. Detrick was briefly reported without criticism or comment on the CBS Evening News.
At the same time as Operation Denver reached its peak, the US government was aggressively pushing back against the campaign. A special interagency Active Measures Working Group, formed in 1981, now placed a special focus on rebutting the AIDS allegations. After Secretary of State George Shultz directly challenged Mikhail Gorbachev about AIDS disinformation in a meeting on October 23, 1987, the Soviets began to back away from the effort. On October 30, Izvestiya, a major Soviet newspaper, published an article by two Soviet scientists denying that AIDS was man-made.
This article marked the de facto end of Operation Denver. The enormous publicity generated by the campaign had produced an American public response that made the effort no longer worth it. At the same time, the spread of AIDS within the USSR made it imperative that Soviet doctors have accurate information about the pandemic. The KGB and Stasi did not abandon the campaign entirely, however. They also launched new active measures efforts, such as allegations that Latin American children were being abducted and having their organs harvested for the benefit of wealthy Americans in need of a transplant.
Jakob Segal, who was enabled by the Stasi, but seems to have genuinely believed the allegations and acted on his own initiative, insisted until his death in 1995 that AIDS was created in an American lab.
Denver’s Impact and Legacy
The impact of Operation Denver lingered long after the demise of both the KGB and Stasi in 1990-1. The allegations resonated with many in the Third World, as well as some Gay Americans and racial minorities in the US. Many of those who had a history of being ill-treated by the US government, and thus had a justified suspicion of it, were inclined to accept the KGB/Stasi claims, no matter how far fetched. This is the key to any successful disinformation campaign: it can only work if there is an audience predisposed to believe it.
Among other effects, the AIDS as bioweapon claim remained on the fringes of those communities where it had gained a foothold, serving as a gateway to further conspiracy theories. It has been embraced by Kanye West, among others. Finally, Operation Denver has helped pave the way for the all too numerous medical disinformation efforts that have come since. Conspiracy theories regarding the origins of Ebola and COVID-19, nonsensical claims of American biowarfare labs around the world, and baseless theories attacking the safety of COVID vaccines, all are in part legacies of the KGB’s active measures “success” involving AIDS.
Geissler, Erhard and Robert Hunt Sprinkle. “Disinformation Squared: Was the HIV-from-Fort-Detrick Myth a Stasi Success?” Politics and the Life Sciences: The Journal of the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 2013; 32 (2): 2-99. DOI:10.2990/32_2_2.
Rid, Thomas. Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020.
Schoen, Fletcher and Christopher J. Lamb. Deception, Disinformation, and Strategic Communications: How One Interagency Group Made a Major Difference. Washington, D.C.: National Defense University Press, 2012. purl.fdlp.gov/GPO/gpo60199.
Selvage, Douglas. Operation “Denver”: The East German Ministry of State Security and the KGB’s AIDS Disinformation Campaign, 1985–1986 (Part 1). Journal of Cold War Studies 2019; 21 (4): 71–123. DOI: 10.1162/jcws_a_00907.
Selvage, Douglas. “Operation “Denver”: The East German Ministry for State Security and the KGB’s AIDS Disinformation Campaign, 1986–1989 (Part 2).” Journal of Cold War Studies 2021; 23 (3): 4-80. DOI: 10.1162/jcws_a_01024.
On November 16, I was honored to deliver the presentation “A Favorite Pastime: Disease and Disinformation in the Cold War” as part of Laupus Library’s Medical History Interest Group series. A copy of the slides and a related bibliography are attached below:
On June 10th, I was privileged to deliver a presentation on the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the North Carolina Library Association’s Government Resources Section Summer Workshop. A link to a PDF copy of my slides is below, as well as links to previous CWIS blog posts offering resources on the war and its historical background.
For Part One (general federal documents sources), click here.
The following is a select list of sources on the Russian armed forces and the military situation in eastern Europe since 2014. The focus is on material produced by the US federal government, though useful non-government and international resources are also provided.
1. Congressional Publications on the Russian Military (2014-present)
McCarthy, Michael C., Matthew A. Moyer and Brett H. Venable. Deterring Russia in the Gray Zone. Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute and U.S. Army War College Press, 2019.
The following is a select list of documents, websites, books and other resources that provide information, background and perspective on the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The list below is meant simply as a starting point for research. While the emphasis is on publications and sources produced by the US government, other types of resources are also included. This conflict began in 2014 with the Russian occupation of the Crimean peninsula, the proxy occupation of parts of eastern Ukraine, and now has escalated into an open Russian military invasion.
Giles, Keir. Moscow Rules: What Drives Russia to Confront the West. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press; London: Chatham House, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2019. (On order for Joyner Library)
Investigation of the Ukrainian Famine, 1932-1933: Report to Congress. Commission on the Ukraine Famine, 1988. (Joyner Docs Stacks Y 3. Uk 7: F 21/988)
Martin, Terry. The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939. Ithaca, New York:Cornell University Press, 2010. (Joyner Stacks JN6520.M5 M27 2001)
Oral History Project of the Commission on the Ukraine Famine. Commission on the Ukraine Famine, 1990, 3 v. (Joyner Docs Stacks Y 3. Uk 7: F 21/990/v.1-3)
Plokhy, Serhii. The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine. Rev. ed. New York: Basic Books, 2021. (Joyner New Books DK508.51 .P554 2021)
Plokhy, Serhii. Lost Kingdom: The Quest for Empire and the Making of the Russian Nation, From 1470 to the Present. New York: Basic Books, 2017. (Joyner Stacks DK43 .P56 2017)
Snyder, Timothy. Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. New York: Basic Books, 2010. (Joyner Stacks DJK49 .S69 2010)
